Post navigation

They have a right to know

I still cannot believe that 3 years have already gone by. It seems as if it were only yesterday that my husband and I held our daughters for the first time and instantly became a family. Everything is so clear in my heart that I can barely call it a memory; it is just another heartbeat that has passed. And yet, here we are facing a new year of life and with it the challenge that has driven me to write this post. The time has come for us to deepen the conversation about our beautiful family’s birth story. It is time to talk straight forth about the gift of adoption.

Don’t get me wrong, ever since our daughters arrived to our home we have spoken openly about adoption and how they are the greatest gift God has blessed us with. But even though they just turned 3, in my heart I know they are ready to begin understanding why mommy says they were not born in her tummy but in her heart.

You see, I do not want society’s misconceptions to tell our daughters that they’re unwanted children, because they WERE NOT AND ARE NOT. I do not want ignorance and prejudice to teach our daughters that we are not their “real parents” or that they do not have a “real home”. I do not want cruelty and frustration to tell them that we are considered less their parents because we did not give birth to them or that they are less our daughters because they do not share our DNA. I forbid shame to walk around the hallways of my home whispering to our children that they were placed in adoption because there was something wrong with them, or worse, that their conception and birth were a mistake. I refuse to allow confusion, mockery, and rebellion attempt to destroy what prayer, longing, passion, and faith so bravely won.

I want our daughters to know that love was the connection that brought us together. That we had been looking for them and praying for them even before knowing that 10 years later we would get to hold them and never let them go. I want our daughters to know that their birthmother, even though we do not know who she is, loved them so much that she made the selfless decision of taking care of them, not by “giving them up”, but by providing the opportunity to thrive in life. I want our daughters to know that they have completed our family and they are so deeply loved.

So it is time to tell them that the bond we share is greater than biology, because when biology failed in my body, faith and love were still holding on to a heavenly promise. They have a right to know that the people who surround them prayed for them and longed for them as passionately as we did. They have a right to know that ADOPTION is neither a sin nor an act of desperation. They have the right to know that they were not an accident, they were not a coincidence, they were not an easy way out…they were the daughters God designed and matched for us. Their identities will always lie around that truth…our adoption story is a story of divine love.

So we have decided to buy children literature related to adoption. For now, we will start by reading to them I Wished for You by Marianne Richmond, Guess How Much I Love You by Sam McBratney, and A Mother for Choco by Keiko Kasza (Spanish edition).

We will put up a memory wall in our halls. We will begin discussing with our church leaders and teachers about ways in which we can reshape the way adoption has been addressed. We will propose ideas, share experiences… and depend on our loved ones to share the REAL story. We will kindly ask our friends and family to never hold back in sharing the journey all of us enrolled so that we could become a family. And we ask of you, dearest reader to help not only my family, but every adoptive family by readdressing the way you talk about adoption to your family…bottom line, we are all homes wishing to give and receive love.